Asparagus Amazingness

Weekends at home are the best! Finally got to spend some time catching up on the chores around the house.

Funny story, we let the ducks loose into the back pond to get some swim time. R and I each carried one all the way over to the back pond. The mares were so curious they followed us straight to the pond and then bolted when we put the ducks in. They wanted nothing to do with the quacking weird things. Anyways, we go to switch the horses around a bit, the mini was switching pastures with the stud, we get back to the front gate and who is waiting for us? The ducks! We let them in and they just gave us the side eye. They wanted nothing to do with the pond. They wanted to hang out with us and the chickens in the yard. Crazy ducks!

Growing season is here!

My second batch of seedlings started in eggshells are doing much better than the first batch did.

With this batch I did things a little differently. I started all the sprouts in one plastic egg carton than moved the bigger sprouts (summer squash and blue lima beans) to another plastic egg carton where they could have the lid open (because they need the room) and kept the beets, spinach and carrots in the original plastic egg carton with the lid closed because they still need the moisture/heat. So far it is working!

I still haven’t been able to get any sweet peppers to make an appearance but I am pretty excited about the summer squash finally growing. The sweet pea sprouts are all over the place on the porch. The spinach is doing great. The beets are growing like crazy. I have carrot sprouts. Blue lima bean sprouts. There are baby strawberry’s. The tomatoes are blooming. I still have seeds I will place in the actual ground too. Today I will be moving them to bigger planters outside and then they should be ready for the ground soon after that.

This last weekend the chickens ate my lettuce. I should have known it was too quiet. They discovered that there is an entire yard to explore. I let them and the ducks free range on the weekends I am home in our fenced in yard. There are lots of little grass buggies for them to eat and they like the out time. Anyways, I went to water my lettuce bin that was getting full, when I noticed that suddenly there was a lot of lettuce missing. Yep, guilty chickens. Grr! Now I know to net the lettuce.

I learned how to drive the tractor and tilled the garden area this last weekend.

We will do one more pass with the tractor this week now that the soil has dried a bit, then do some passes with the smaller hand tiller to make actual rows and put down a plastic tarp to prevent weeds growing through. Then it should be planting time! Can’t wait to get my baby’s into the ground.

I also experimented with some asparagus I got off a road side stand. Farm fresh asparagus makes me happy but I am always looking for amazing ways to cook it. I don’t like it too soft and I don’t like it without a little flavor. So I experimented and I have to tell you, even R ate up a ton of it. It was that good! You have to try it!

Baked Asparagus

Ingredients:

A bundle of asparagus – trimmed

2-3 fresh garlic cloves crushed

2-3 tablespoons of olive oil

Himalayan pink salt

Lemon pepper

Instructions:

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.

Trim your asparagus. Spread out on cooking sheet. Drizzle olive oil all over the asparagus. Add in some salt (per taste), fresh crushed garlic (again per taste) and lemon pepper (again per taste). Mix it all together with your hands, kind of rolling the asparagus in the mixture to coat it as much as possible. You might need to re-sprinkle the garlic over the top or add an extra clove of crushed garlic once it is all mixed in.

Bake for 12-15 minutes.

Easy and was so good. Was the perfect amount of crunchy and soft. Had great flavor. Was easy to make. I think I found my new go to asparagus recipe!